Chapter Nine
Andrej
THE PHONE RANG on my desk. I glanced at the screen, and it was Tara’s number. I didn’t know if I could talk to her at the moment. I was still a jumble of emotions, and I didn’t want to keep having to resort myself every time I thought about Quinn.
A moment later, the phone rang again. Then again.
Fourth time, I answered, and she didn’t even give me a chance to say anything.
“Have you seen Quinn?”
“Hi, Tara.”
“I’m serious, Andrej. Have you seen him? He isn’t answering his phone, he hasn’t been home in two whole days, and he no showed on a date last night and Foxy was worried.”
“I haven’t talked to him,” I said.
“That’s it?”
“Tara, hon, I am on your side with this, I am, but he won’t talk to me. He hasn’t called or contacted me at all.”
“Shit.”
I could hear the tears in her voice. She wasn’t kidding around, and she hadn’t seen her brother lately.
“Has he ever done this before?”
“No, not at all. He’s mister reliable, and he’s never gone more than a day without at least a quick check in. He’s too worried about me to go much longer than that.”
My supervisor looked at me and nodded letting me know that I could go if I needed to.
I didn’t, but Tara needed me to. I nodded back.
“Tara, I’m leaving work now. I’m going to grab the boat because it’s going to get me over there faster.
” I logged out and closed the computer. “But you still have to give me about an hour and a half. Did you call the police?”
“No, I didn’t,”
“You should totally do that,” I said. “You at least want to get a missing persons report on the record.”
“Got it, I’ll do that while you’re on the way.”
“Ask them to come to the house. Don’t try to get to the station. Just ask them to come to the house.”
“I will.”
The connection closed and I was already running down the stairs to my car. Thankfully it wasn’t rush hour, but traffic was still stupid. My office was north of the marina, which was why I was taking the boat.
Luck was with me, and the lock was cycling out to the Sound next, so I undocked and got going as fast as I could. I got the Tahitian Moon going across the sound. I lucked out that the channel was clear for a mile on either side of where I had to cross, and there were no mammal warnings.
I hated going this fast in a big boat like this one.
She was sleek, but a little top heavy and the waves were tossing me pretty hard.
Still, I didn’t pull back on the throttle more than I had to.
I rounded Wing Point and headed for the dock, swiping my ride share app open and ordering one.
The Bainbridge terminal was right there, so one would be there almost immediately.
The dock hands were able to help me tie up the boat and I ran up to where the ride share car was supposed to be waiting. The little blue Prius was right there, and I hopped in the back and spit out the address for Quinn’s house.
Tara was standing on the front porch with a police officer and a cruiser in the driveway.
“Tara?” I asked, walking up after tipping the driver generously.
“Andrej,” she whispered. “I’m scared. I’m so scared.”
I opened my arms, and she walked into them for a hug. “Tara, you know he’s fine. You know he’s alive.”
“And you are?” the officer asked.
“Andrej Krastins.”
“That doesn’t help me,” she answered.
“I’m his...”
Tara looked over to the officer. “Situationship. It’s complicated, but he needs to be here. For me. And to help us.”
“Okay,” she said, and scribbled something down on her note pad. “And you haven’t spoken to him in the past twenty-four hours?”
“No.” I didn’t elaborate.
“Well, it looks like we do have a missing person here, and I’ll get the paperwork going. But you’re not going to get the pomp and circumstance that you think you’re going to get about this. We can only devote so many officers to this and only for a little while.”
Tara shuttered and I narrowed my eyes at this officer. “That’s a great thing to say to the missing man’s twin, Officer Moore.”
“I’m doing my job. I’m setting realistic expectations.”
“May we have a copy of the report?”
“You can pick it up tomorrow at the station. I’ll have some detectives out here in about an hour to talk to you and do some checking into his personal goods to get some leads.”
Tara put a hand on mine. “Thank you, officer. We’ll be waiting.”
She walked down the path back to the cruiser parked there, and we stepped inside the house, waiting for the car to disappear. Tara stared at the empty street.
“That woman was useless. She didn’t believe me at all, and now we have to wait even longer for the detectives to get here and snoop around.”
Cocking my head, I considered her a moment. “You said he had a date the other night?” She nodded. “Did he tell you where?”
“No, but he didn’t drive toward the ferry. He went the other way.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, pulling out my phone. “We can find out what’s going on.” I dialed the office for Foxy’s Rent-a-Date and put it on speaker.
“Foxy’s,” came a familiar voice.
“Hi, Taryn, it’s Andrej.”
“Andrej. He’s not going to accept--”
“I’m not calling about that. Quinn has gone missing during one of the dates. Neither me nor his sister can get a hold of him. It’s been days since we’ve heard or seen from him.”
“What?” Her voice was deadly. “We vet everyone that we set up for dates--”
“We are also not blaming you. We need to know where his last date was and who it was with. We’re going to have to do some of this search ourselves since they sent the rudest officer ever to take the report.”
“Right, got you,” she said. “Who is we?”
“His twin, Tara and me. And I could probably get my sister into this.”
Tara leaned in. “I think it has to do with his old boyfriend. I think they are trying to get him to make money for them.”
“You all are from New York, what on earth would his ex be doing out here?” Taryn asked as I could hear her fingers flying over the keyboard.
“He’s wealthy. Like, wealthy-wealthy. I could see him wanting more out of him. It was his whole thing when they lived together. We didn’t realize that he was using us for money. I wish we had.”
“So, you think they kidnapped him?”
“I think so,” she said. “Or they’re holding him against his will. He’s always been my protector and if Jarrett threatened me, he’d go with him and do anything he had to to keep me safe.”
“That’s an amazing brother,” Taryn said. “But his last date was with someone named Kyle.”
Tara’s faced dropped. “Kyle? Durant?”
“That’s the name.”
“Where the hell did he come from? That’s his ex from college, the other rotten egg!”
“They were supposed to... Oh, my God. That’s not the name he used when he booked the date! He managed to… wait… what is that...” Taryn started typing even faster and mumbling to herself. “Oh, my God, Andrej, he broke into our system and left a message for you.”
“What?”
She laughed. “Yeah, there’s a message here in your file. With an address and a request to contact the FBI.”
I looked at Tara. “He’s brilliant.”
“He is.”
“I can handle the FBI call,” Taryn said. “That’s easy enough. Do you want the address? Can you promise me that you’re not going to go in there swinging or trying to play Jason Bourne?”
“I have no interest in being Jason Bourne, but yes, I’ll take the address. I can give it to my sister and she can call the police to help the FBI.”
“Sounds perfect,” Taryn said. “Be careful. And Andrej, we’ll miss your business.”
The phone clicked off and I stared at it for a moment. I stared at it and Tara started laughing. “Those ladies are perceptive, aren’t they?”
***
The FBI agent walked to the door of the car where Tara and I were sitting, down the street.
“I don’t want you two moving from here,” he said. “We’re going to need you to come with us to the office, but I don’t need you getting hurt in the meanwhile.”
“Agent Biddle, we have no interest in getting any closer,” I said, glancing at the large number of official vehicles down the road. “None at all.”
“Good,” he said, and pounded his fist on the doorframe and headed back to the rest of the officials.
Officer Moore, as it turned out, did not actually end up sending a detective.
She did not even enter the report. She didn’t do anything with the information.
So when the FBI contacted her, she got in deep shit.
We were led to understand that she was on desk duty and would be undergoing additional training.
Someone in Foxy’s had a connection—because the agents were there, PDQ. They were at the door of Quinn and Tara's bungalow within an hour of getting off the phone with Taryn.
We were told that while they were on their way to the bungalow, there was a team on their way to the address and we were welcome to head over, but there would be interrogations after.
Tara and I couldn’t get to the car fast enough.
We drove like mad to the dock where I was tied up, flew across the Sound, and jumped in my car waiting in the parking lot.
Within an hour we were heading to where the FBI was waiting near the address.
Agent Biddle had met us there and explained what was going on.
It was so much more than just someone taking my… well, boyfriend.
“As it turns out,” Biddle said, “you found the last piece of a fraud ring that we’ve been trying to break for years. We just needed the location of their servers, and we thought we had it back in New York. Then it up and disappeared.
“Lo and behold, when Taryn called us, we pinged the servers and they bounced back to this location, in a single bounce. They were so close we were able to interrupt any locations that it might bounce off. Brilliant mind on that boy…” He glanced down the road at someone.
“Anyway, got it in one, and we sent the warrant off to the judge to sign.
“Just waiting on that. The sheriff should be along in just a few minutes.”